Budapest pizzeria offers time-travel twist with ancient Rome-inspired pie
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — In Hungary’s capital, a city best known for its goulash, a pizzeria is inviting diners to travel back two millennia to a time before tomatoes, mozzarella or even the word “pizza” were known in Europe.
At Neverland Pizzeria in central Budapest, founder Josep Zara and his team have created a limited-edition pie using only ingredients that would have been available in ancient Rome, long before what we know today as pizza ever existed.
“Curiosity drove us to ask what pizza might have been like long ago,” Zara said. “We went all the way back to the Roman Empire and wondered whether they even ate pizza at the time.”
Strictly speaking, they did not. Tomatoes arrived in Europe centuries later from the Americas, and mozzarella was as yet unknown. Some histories have it that the discovery of mozzarella led directly to the invention of pizza in Naples in the 1700s.
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“We’ve always liked coming up with new and interesting things, but tradition is also very important for us, and we thought that these two things together suit us,” he said.
However, he added, there is a modern boundary the restaurant will not cross. “We do a lot of experimentation with our pizzas. But of course, we definitely do not use pineapple,” he said.
